Help Your Kids Create Their Personal Style the Fun Way

Today I have guest fashion blogger Chloe Miller! She has some great tips on helping your kids cultivating a good fashion sense!

So Glad to be here on Angela’s blog! Always a pleasure to have a chance to jibber-jabber on someone else’s cyber space. Anyway, some of us know how hard it can be to dress kids, so, have you ever considered fun ways of teaching them how to dress? Have you considered helping them create their own style? Why dress them for school? Let them dress you for work!

Kids are not dolls that you can just dress up as you want without regard of their wishes. Kids develop their own preferences for clothes, patterns, and motifs at an early age; you should respect this and develop it. It is a great thing when your child can choose what they want to wear, and you will be proud of that moment. Of course, there will be some catastrophic choices along the way. All you can do is steer your kid in the right direction, and try not to negatively influence their confidence. When developing your child’s personal style, you should take on three roles: steersman, watcher, and cheerleader. We’ll try to help you with that.

Encourage and Support

Don’t react judgmentally if your little girl’s first combination is a leopard patterned skirt and pink polka dots t-shirt. It is a fashion disaster, but it is also your little one’s first fashion accomplishment. By encouraging your kids and commending their effort in getting dressed, you are giving their confidence a necessary boost. This way they will keep up with the efforts, and sooner or later they will mix and match clothes successfully. If you are strongly intended on avoiding disasters, then limit their clothing choices to neutral colors or for some patterns that go well with each other.

Talk Fashion Talks

It’s important to talk to your kids about the art of fashion. Still, don’t make it a boring lecture; they’ll only sleep through it. Make it a fun game instead. A color wheel will be an interesting instrument for learning complementary colors. A memory-cards color matching game is also a good way for them to have a fun experience while still discovering new things. “Dress the doll” games or even “dress the mom,” if you are brave enough, will help them apply that new knowledge on clothes. Learning about seasonal clothes {jackets, swimwear, sandals, boots, etc} is also important.

Talk Shopping Talks

Sure, it’s lovely that your kids have their own taste, but if you let them take whatever they want in a boutique, your wallet will be completely emptied. As school is starting again, it is the perfect moment to use all you’ve learned, and start shopping together. It is really important for them to learn how to shop properly, and why they should save money. When they are little, they will not understand the prices, but you can make it a bad number/good number game. Everything under 10, for instance, is a good number. Reward their efforts. Explain to them that buying used clothes is a good way to make all the numbers “good” while still getting what they want. Here you can find pieces you and your kids will love.

Style Inspirations and Trends

Style is forever, but trends come and go. Still, your kids should know a little something about both. Finding a style inspiration with your kids is a good way to spend some quality time together, while discovering new things. Share some magazine pages, fashion blogs, or catalogs with your children, and try to realize what kind of style they prefer. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover they’re into retro wardrobe or rock ‘n’ roll style?

To explain fashion trends to them, try using a single piece of wardrobe and its development throughout history. Pick jeans, for instance, and then go from bell bottom jeans, washed jeans, low waist, and all the way to skinny jeans. Let them know that they don’t have to follow the trends blindly, but find their own ways of wearing certain pieces. The art of standing out from the crowd is what they will learn along the way. For now, they just have to love what they’re wearing.

Teaching your kids what and how to dress can be somewhat stressful at the beginning, but it will save you plenty of time in the future, and make you a proud parent of a skillful “fashionista”.

Chloe Miller

Chloe is a beauty and health enthusiast from Adelaide, Australia. Regular contributor at HighStyleLife and The Fashion Culte Magazine, Equestrian, and a mum-to-be. In love with koalas and Sicily.

Oh, hi there

I'm Angela. I currently live in Denver with my daughter and our cat, Violet Beauregarde. I'm a freelance writer and public relations specialist who grew up in the 70's and 80's. One of my favorite things about being a mom is sharing my childhood favorites with my daughter. We're creating nostalgic moments in the everyday. Welcome to Popsiculture!
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